Mass Effect 3 pretty solid ending to the ME series. I was a little late to the party and so I was interested in seeing why there was so much hate for the ending. I was disappointed for how not-dissappointing the ending was. I was all ready to get riled up and in the end I found the presentation interesting and the ending with buzz aldrin voicing the grandfather was a really nice touch. The ending probably could have been better but it definitely didn't deserve the ridiculous amount of hate it got. There is just a massive amount of entitled gamers That have the ability to instantly troll any company that doesn't meet their expectations of a perfect game.

I would say ME2 was probably a better overall game since it had a more defined structure. In ME2 you are collecting team members for a final "death-star run" and it builds really nicely to a scenario where different people die or survive depending on how well you've done up to that point. ME3 is more like skyrim in the way that there are tons of small random mission interspersed between a few main story quest lines. I found that I wasn't quite as invested in the game as most of the quests don't really build from one to another. But on the other hand I think they had to do that so they could fit all the choices that you had made in the first two games and with the unconnected quest structure they can fit in the quests that are appropriate to the story line that you have crafted. ME3 try's to throw everything in and succeeds at being a good game when it could have been a great game.

All in all I think bioware achieved what they set out to do and that is to bring their branching story structure to a trilogy of games. They have provided more meaningful choices into an rpg than Any other game that I know of. It felt like you could create your story and then compare notes with someone who experienced entirely different outcomes.

Bioware changed/added to the ME3 ending. Haven't replayed it since the ending DLC but the original ending was the WOAT.

I enjoyed the original ending and didn't really see the fuss. The thing that irked me was that the three versions were so close to each other and in the end the choices didn't matter so much as we had been led to believe.

Bioware changed/added to the ME3 ending. Haven't replayed it since the ending DLC but the original ending was the WOAT.

I played original ending. It wasn't great but it wasn't horrible. It had some editing problems that made what was going on with the Normandy confusing. The three different ending not really being that different was kind of lame but not really something to start an Internet campaign over. I think the thing is that it's hard to place all the iterations into an ending that is going to be unique for each player without having to make a lot of different endings.

I think they definitely were running out of time and went with the more generic method of reusing assets. But there isn't really any games that I know of that have a great ending with multiple distinct variations. Even the walking dead only had one ending. The only one that springs to mind that did it right was the original 2d fallouts. ME3 could have followed that model with a separate epilogue for each of your major choices. It sucks that they didn't but as far as single endings go it was ok.

I think the thing is that it's hard to place all the iterations into an ending that is going to be unique for each player without having to make a lot of different endings.

Yeah, I wasn't outraged about that - given that there really were a ton of spots in the game where earlier decisions made a difference later on - just that it was advertised that the ending would be affected too.

The gameplay is actually pretty weak. ME2 made an effort to make the combat more interesting but ME3 has very mediocre level design and I am really hoping that cover based shooters are a fad that is going away. Hiding behind the safety and just popping out to play whack a mole really isn't that much fun. I've been playing gta 4 again and it really shows how much of a fad cover based shooting was since its totally inappropriate for the type of game GTA is supposed to be.

I want to play the whole ME series again if they come out with a collectors edition but I will probably just put it on easy so I can play through the combat as fast as possible. I guess I just tolerate because I am a sucker for scifi RPGs and there aren't many good ones around.

The game is like $5 on steam and is one of the best games I have ever played, the soundtrack & design of the game is flawless, the game play is awesome, it involves strategy, skill and sometimes you even need to get lucky to make it through some of the insane levels, the story is weird, but I really enjoyed it.
9.5/10

It's more of the same with a few small improvements. If anything it's even more guilty then the first of sacrificing game play for scripted action movie setpieces. Too often it's one minute of action to two of cut scene. The giant creature riding parts are new and they were the highlight for me. The giant Worm was the low point it looked promising. I was expecting a 3d re imagining of the last level of Contra what I got was a bland chase down a corridor before effectively one button quick time eventing a couple of week points. I look forward to seeing what People can fly do with the franchise because I think if the levels where larger the AI better and the player offered more control rather then being shunted from setpiece to setpiece it could be a really great game.
6/10

As a fan of the series since Silent Assassin, have been looking forward to this game for some time and am so glad it did not disappoint.

Absolution is the pinnacle of refinement for the series, the controls finally feel fluid, you feel in control and you feel that the game is working with you and you don't have to worry about the clunkiness of its mechanics thwarting you. Hand to hand combat is greatly improved and the shooting mechanics feel great/tight as well. It's a very good looking game, wonderful job on atmosphere and awesome attention to detail.

My main complaints would be the sometimes annoying gaps of logic in AI (ie one of 40 SWAT team guys can quickly make you in a smoking warehouse even though you're in a full swat suit), on harder difficulties, throwing objects to get guards to wander off so you can isolate them is a pretty exploitable common move that they never adapt to etc. This can be pretty frustrating at times but in general they hit a pretty good balance.

Replay value is decent, playing through again on the harder settings is rewarding as knowing the lay of the land lets you run through more intelligent enemies and experiment with different techniques without all the stumbles you probably made on the first playthrough. Contracts, a mode where you can play player created custom hits, is pretty much worthless, they plunk you in the games main levels and the contracts I played were all pretty horrible, ymmv.

Game feels and looks great, highly recommended if you've liked other games in the series or are into stealth kinda stuff.

9/10

+1

Game is phenomenal. All of the levels have great attention to detail. The npcs have some very funny small talk conversations and there's some good subtlety in certain spots. Graphics and environments are rich.

Most of the levels have at least a few different ways to approach the objectives and they created a challenges screen which has multiple ways to accomplish some of the objectives. For instance if your objective is to kill bad guy x, there might be 2-4 different ways to do it using environmental advantages such as rigging the gas oven to explode or sniping a guy over the edge to simultaneously kill and hide the body. The more challenges you do, the bigger bonus you get to your point score. It also shows some point score averages which are interesting. The game rewards you for trying to be as stealthy as possible, which caters to a slower and calculating play style.

The only negative I found is that at some points the stealth ai detection would be inconsistent and frustrating. For instance, getting spotted loses you points and severely caps your top end score for a level, yet there are certain times where I'd pop out to shoot a guy in the back of his head and the "spots" me a millisecond before he's dead, yet I still get penalized. Other times, it didn't seem to happen.

Super fun game overall IMO. Good storyline that continued from where blood money left off. Would recommend both games as I played/finished them back to back the last 2 wks.

PSN game that I'd been waiting for a discount on for almost 3 years, finally got it this Christmas. The $15 regular price is way too high.

The game is standard R&C, which I'm a bit sick of at this point. Hopefully A Crack in Time has more interesting mechanics (I've heard that it does).

The story and production are okay, again, standard R&C. This takes place in-between Tools of Destruction and Crack in Time and is only 3-4 hours long. Play it if you're a completist or are really aching for 3-4 traditional R&C levels, otherwise skip it.

3/10 - that's not to say it's a bad game, but for the $15 non-sale price it's moronic.

A year old game that recently went free to play (but as far as I can tell, all the good stuff is free). Not sure how to categorize it other than the now fairly broad Rogue-like category. You control a group of dwarves in a proceduraly generated landscape, mining blocks and minerals for gold while avoiding trapped caves filled with water and lava that can flood your entire mine, monsters that can overrun you if not handled, or treasure. Each game lasts a set amount of time that you choose, 15m, 30m, 45m or 1hr, and your goal is to get the highest score possible.

The graphics look a little bland, but it has a great style that drew me in quickly, and pretty simple gameplay that can get a bit hectic as your dwarves get further and further away from the starting point. There's only a limited pause function, that only lasts for a short time and has a cooldown between uses, so the challenge lies in getting more points by expanding outwards with your miners while not letting them accidentally expose lava/water/mobs that can overrun the map.

The game is like $5 on steam and is one of the best games I have ever played, the soundtrack & design of the game is flawless, the game play is awesome, it involves strategy, skill and sometimes you even need to get lucky to make it through some of the insane levels, the story is weird, but I really enjoyed it.
9.5/10

just finished this. been around games for a while and this is the best game I've ever played in terms of value for money. I actually feel bad now that I have only paid $7.50 for it on Steam, it's worth alot more.

Just overall a brilliant game, everything works together, the music in combination with the gameplay is fantastic, rarely have I been glued in front of my PC so much. Just to show how good the game is, my GF bought me a brand new xbox and I went and bought 5 of what is considered to be good games for it and all I've been playing is Hotline Miami.

Anyone remotely interested in video games should buy this game.

Edit: I got 11h of play out of it and are excited to get back at it and break highscores.

I recently bought a Wii to go with my newly purchased home as I figured it'd be fun to have a game system that was accessible to everyone at a party. Bought Twilight Princess, Galaxy 1 and it came with NSMBW which I started with.

This is the kind of game that is usually bad for me because I'm OCD with some games (not all though, not sure how to translate it) and this was one of them. Must. Collect. All. Special. Coins. Part of it is a big trip down nostalgia lane because I was always a Nintendo kid growing up with the NES/SNES/64 but hadn't owned a console since then. I think the game captured the magic of SMB1 and 3 quite well while throwing in some new features with the motion capabilities of the WiiMote. There were abilities I wasn't even discovering until late in the game, maybe it speaks to my lack of console play in recent years but I'd like to think the game was just designed with good scope.

Overall the game was not overly difficult, it took a bit of play to get used to a remote again but it was like riding a bike. I'd say the difficulty of the game ramps up extremely when playing with multiple players, especially at 4 and friends and I have had a blast playing it. As a single player it had its challenges at points but again not very difficult. Final battle is unique, worlds are fun. I'm not technically done with the game as I still have to go back and collect a bunch of coins to go through the *spoiler* star world *spoiler* but I've beaten the main game and haven't posted a review in a bit so I wanted to do that.

Pretty good, pleased with the purchase on this game alone and from my understanding I won't be disappointed with the other AAA titles I don't think.